Lise Eliot received her B.A. in History and Science from Harvard and Ph.D. in Physiology and Cellular Biophysics from Columbia University, working with Eric Kandel on the role of synaptic plasticity in learning. She conducted postdoctoral research in cellular neurophysiology at Baylor College of Medicine before turning her attention to human brain and child development. In 2002, Dr. Eliot joined the faculty of the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine & Science, where she directs the Interdepartmental PhD Program in Neuroscience, a Medical Neuroscience course for first year medical students, and a Research Ethics course for PhD students.

Dr. Eliot has published more than 60 works, including peer-reviewed journal articles, magazine pieces, and the book, What's Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life (Bantam, 2000) which has been hailed as "popular science at its best." Her second book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was named one of the Washington Post's "Best Books of 2009." Other honors include the Leonard J. Siff Prize for best undergraduate thesis in the History of Science at Harvard, a predoctoral NSF fellowship, a postdoctoral NIH fellowship, a Grass Fellowship in Neurophysiology, a Whiteley Scholarship from the University of Washington, and a Rosalind Franklin Award for Excellence in Teaching.

She is a founding member of the American Council for CoEducational Schooling (ACCES), which advocates for gender equity in education. Dr. Eliot's current research is focused on neural plasticity and the development of sex differences.